Introduction

Empiricism can be expressed as the view that all justification of beliefs about real existence is dependent on experience, or empirical. To distinguish the questions of origin and justification, we can call the claim that beliefs about reality must be justified empirically justificatory empiricism and the thesis that all concepts and beliefs are acquired by experience conceptual empiricism. This understanding of empiricism and rationalism centres on the justification of our beliefs. There is also an issue about the origin of concepts. Empiricism and rationalism are sometimes defined in terms of analytic and synthetic propositions. The defect with this as a definition of ‘empiricism’ is that it leaves out one of the main claims made by rationalists. One must also be careful of empiricists who combine their denial of a priori knowledge of real existence with other doctrines, then claim that theirs is the only form of empiricism.